Re: Sieve library

[Sam Roberts]

Quoting Sergey Poznyakoff <address@hidden>, who wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Quoting TODO:
> > - run as daemon, sieveing mail on arrival (need interface for notification
> >   of message arrival, this is supported by imap, but we'll have to fake
> >   for pop and local spools my polling, why can't you select() on a unix
> >   file?)
> 
> I'd rather propose to make it a library, say libsieve. Then this library can
> be used in writing an MDA which will sieve the mail immediately upon
> arrival. Maybe we could make such delivery agent a part of the project, too.
> How do you think?

It is already a library, minus some small rearrangements of sieve.c (like
seperating the main out). I haven't bothered yet because its not pressing
until I have get the earlier TODO items done, that add essential
capabilities.

I have dreams, as well, of an MDA, as well as a simple MTA that listens
only on 127.0.0.1, and otherwise works much like null-mailer, i.e. a
simple non-relaying MTA.

However, the daemon I describe is a "killer app". One of the most common
questions on the mutt mailing lists is "how do I filter my mail". The
answer is almost always "procmail". This is useless advice for many
people, specifically all those whos companies IMAP servers don't or can't
run procmail. People like me! So, we need to filter mail on the IMAP
server, from a local machine, since we can't replace the MDA.

The next suggestion is usually run fetchmail to pull it to your local
machine, and setup procmail there. But I *like* having my mail in an
IMAP mailbox, I want it there, I just want it filtered.

Anyhow, that's where I'm trying to go first with sieve. And I think
modifying it to act as an MDA would be great, I probably will, but
I'm trying to work towards this daemon, because it fills a niche where
there is no tool currently in existence. That's why I think it's a
killer app, I think there's a lot of latent interest. For that matter,
it's pretty close to a fetchmail replacement, too. Slightly different
usage pattern, wouldn't do a bunch of cool things that fetchmail does,
but for the basic job of bringing your mail down to your machine, you
could do that with this daemon, and it would filter at the same time!

Well, when I'm done, anyhow, finding time has been difficult lately. Argh.
This weekend I hope.

Cheers!
Sam

-- 
Sam Roberts <address@hidden> (Vivez sans temps mort!)